The Taiwanese company that provides displays and electronic components for Apple, Nokia, and others has admitted that more employees than previously reported have been poisoned by an industrial chemical used in its manufacturing facilities.
According to a report Thursday by Global Post, a Wintek spokesman admitted that 62 …

COMMENTS

But Apple are green!

Heart attacks

So the chemical - which can cause muscular degeneration - had nothing to do with the person who died, because he died when his heart - which is pretty much entirely muscle - gave out. No possible connection there, right?

Green hardware companies

Even without this issue, it's hard to imagine how anyone could consider Apple (or any/many other hardware companies) "green" when their modus operandi is to convince the world to buy electronic gadgets and then, a year later, throw them in the bin and buy the new models.

I imagine every hardware company *wants* to do that but Apple seem fairly unique in actually achieving it, with people being eager to bin their current Apple kit and refresh it as soon as a new model is out. (Or maybe it's just the people I know.)

That's not to mention their Nintendo-like knack for intentionally messing up aspects of early models so that there are easy & obvious things to add to the later refreshes to tempt not new customers but the same old customers to buy another version of the hardware they already have.

Or batteries the user cannot replace...

It's one reason I've always thought Al Gore was a hypocrite for going on about the environment while being on the board of a company that, however hip their image may be, seems intent on stuffing landfills full of last year's tech.

@"stuffing landfills full of last year's tech."

You've just triggered a very old memory there. I remember long ago, Apple using landfills to prevent reducing their markup sales price on other hardware and in 1989 they used landfill to gain a tax write-off on their unsold inventory. For example,

(via wikipedia) "In 1989, Apple disposed of approximately 2,700 unsold Lisas in a guarded landfill in Logan, Utah, in order to receive a tax write-off on the unsold inventory" here's the direct link to the article.

Thats not even close to green. It actually shows a considerable ruthless streak. They wouldn't even give the computers away. I remember at the time thinking what an incredible waste. They could have done so much good even giving them away to so many groups. Even universities and colleges would have taken them for experiments or even just component scrap. But no, Apple were determined to landfill the lot.

Suzhou

It's not quite the smog-dwelled factory city that you may imagine, given there are cities that have a huge number of factories produce electronic goods. I was surprised to read that this happened in Suzhou. I suspect this production line is really somewhere out of the main city.

China Daily

reports the People's Republic of China's Government view - and that view of Taiwan (aka the Republic of China) might just be a little less than impartial. I suggest taking news on Taiwan from that source with a reasonably-sized portion of salt, and washing it down with the icon.

WHAT?!

China Daily

China Daily more often than not reports the PRChina government view, but there is the odd exposé that goes against the party line, things that are printed against government approval.

It could be the newspaper getting a bit of slack now and again, or it could be a cunning government plan to either promote or allow these slippages from the 'party line' to persuade the more intelligent residents of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou that the papers aren't as biased as may appear.

Best hope is that the seperation of CCP and editors of newspapers widens as things progress towards the future. Mind you, when you take a look at our newspapers, would you wish the adherence to whatever party is in power by many editors be matched in China?

@Leo Davidson

Given anguished protests when Mozilla announced that their next Firefox wouldn't run on OS X 10.4, I think there are plenty of Apple customers who don't throw away their old thing when the new one comes along.

Or maybe they do but they sell it or donate it to someone else, and -those- are the disappointed Mozilla fans.